Devil's Advocate
by Fluorescent Starlight
Summary: Formerly "The Puppeteer". After Caine's encounter with the Darkness after GONE, Diana fears having no one to stand between her and Drake's wrath. When news of an interesting new power reaches Coates, Diana desires using the power for her own purposes.
1. Prologue

**A/N: Must I give a long winded explanation? The beginning is a flashback. **_**Italics**_**; duh.**

**Disclaimer: **_**GONE canon belongs to Michael Grant.**_

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**Devil's Advocate |Gone| (00)**

"_Fucking bite me," I laughed at my brother from my perch on the sofa. "I'm not doing your chores, Dean. Why don't you try and swindle the stupid one into doing your bidding?" I jerked my head at our other, much-younger brother Danny, who was completely oblivious until he heard his name._

_He raised his head from where he was playing Xbox. "Huh?"_

_Dean and I just ignored him, as we typically did._

_"Kasey. Please. I'm begging here—_begging. _If my chores aren't done, Mom won't let me go out with Izzie. I _have _to—"_

_"You're right," I interrupted. "Begging isn't your style. _Groveling, _now that's more like it." I gave him a twisted grin. "By which I mean, down on your knees, puppy eyes, hands clasping together, Dean."_

_He glared hatefully at me, but sucked it up and got on his knees in front of me, hands clasped together. Giving a martyred sigh, he deadpanned, "_Please_, will you do my chores for me, Kasey, oh, loveable sister of mine?" He spat the words out like they were painted in a layer of arsenic._

_I watched him in amusement, wishing I had a camera right about now._

_"Well," I said, slowly just to make him sweat. "I _guess. _But since I'm out sick with the 'flu' right now"—Dean scoffed at that—"then you owe me. Big. Just because you're a senior and I'm only in ninth grade doesn't make you big and tough. You'll give me every cent of your allowance for the next month."_

_"No fucking way!" he exploded, jumping up to his feet. "I need that money!"_

_"Then get a job. I'm only fourteen. There are labor laws."_

_"What do you need my allowance for?" Dean screeched._

_I only shrugged._

_"Forget it," he seethed._

_"Then forget _me _doing your damn chores. You can scurry and try to finish in time to still meet up _Izzie _tonight, or you can give me your allowance in return for me saving your ass. And your lame love life," I added, smirking._

_He looked like he could punch me right in the teeth._

_"You manipulative little bitch," he told me._

_I shrugged again._

_"_Fine. _But only because Izzie's really important to me. I'll give you my damn allow—"_

_Dean was gone._

_I blinked once, twice, rubbed my eyes._

_Gone?_

_"Dean?" I called unsurely, sitting up and looking around. "Where did you go?"_

_Danny turned away from the TV again, head swiveling to search for our brother. "What happened?" he asked._

_I got to my feet and looked around. "Dean, this isn't funny!" I yelled. "Where did you go? How the hell did you Houdini yourself out of here?"_

_Danny stood up, not pausing his game, and grabbed onto my shirt with his little six-year-old hands. I resisted the urge to shake him off, but I forced myself to ignore him as I went up the basement stairs to the main floor, still calling for Dean._

_"Mom!" I called. "Is Dean up here?"_

_No answer._

_Nothing but the sudden smell of smoke, and then the screeching of the smoke detector. Danny shrieked and covered his ears, and I hurried into the kitchen, almost slipping on the hardwood floors in my socks, and gaped at the stovetop fire, burning whatever was in the skillet. A plume of white smoke was billowing up to the ceiling, and I went over to shut off the oven, coughing at the faceful of smoke I got in return for it. I grabbed an Ove'-Glove from the counter, grabbed the handle of the skillet, and threw the burning contents into the sink, turning on the faucet to cool it off and put out the flames. I opened the windows over the counters to get rid of the smoke, grabbing a dish towel to help speed along the process by fanning the smoke to the windows._

_I turned slowly back to see Danny standing in the same spot as before, hands still over his ears. I realized the alarm was still piercing the air with its racket, and I stood on a chair to tug it off the ceiling to shut it up. Without the alarm, the silence was smothering and heavy._

_It was too quiet._

_"Mom?" I called. "Dean?"_

_Danny scurried over to me, clutching onto my oversized sleep-tee again and burying his face in my stomach. I normally would have shoved him away, but right now, I was just as confused and frightened as he was. I slowly wrapped an arm around his shoulders, looking around at the empty house._

_Dad was already at work, Mom was typically home all day, and Dean had an off-period at his school this early. And now Mom and Dean are gone._

_I grabbed the phone from its cradle on the kitchen counter and hurriedly dialed my dad's cell number._

_There was only silence. No ringing, no dial tone, nothing._

_I hung up and tried again, frantic._

_Nothing._

_Silence with Mom's phone._

_Silence with Dean's._

_Silence with 911._

_Danny clutched onto me tighter as I sank to the floor to lean against the counter. "Where are they?" he asked, starting to cry._

_I did another out-of-character thing: I pulled Danny into my lap and hugged him as tight as a teddy bear._

_"I don't know," I told him, my voice shaking._

_I knew no more than he did; whatever was going on here was scarier than any horror movie._

_I was hoping desperately that this was some fever dream brought on by my fake flu, but I couldn't convince myself of that. It was just a poor excuse to avoid going to school today; it wasn't a real flu._

_Was everyone gone? Were Danny and I the only ones left in this whole town? In the world?_

_"Danny," I said, fighting to keep my voice steady. "Can you go look out the window? Do you see anyone?"_

_He reluctantly pulled himself from my lap, went to the front window and looked out. "I see people," he said, excited and worried at the same time. "Kids."_

_"Kids?" I echoed._

_"Yeah." He turned and scurried back to me. "Your age, my age."_

_I shakily got to my feet and followed him back to the window, looking out myself in case he was lying. Kids, wandering the streets, looking confused and scared, just like us._

_I grabbed Danny's hand and pulled him with me towards the front door. I pulled it open and hurried to the sidewalk barefoot, ignoring the burn of the hot concrete on the soles of my feet, and I flagged down the first person I saw. It was a boy I vaguely recognized from my school, although I couldn't remember his name for the life of me._

_"Hey, what the hell is going on?" I asked._

_He looked nervous. "I don't know. No one does. All the adults, teachers, teenagers...they all just disappeared."_

_"Teenagers?" I asked. I was a teenager. Why was I still here?_

_"Like, fifteen and older. Gone. Poofed right out of school, right in front of us."_

_I felt sick to my stomach as I pictured Dean in my head, just disappearing._

_Without warning, without a single noise._

_Almost like a flicker, like when the signal from the satellite to the TV gets interrupted, or when a song skips on a CD._

_Just gone. Simple as that, and yet so complicated. Where were the explanations?_

_Where was Ashton Kutcher?_

_I didn't quite want to leave my house—I definitely didn't want to leave the one thing familiar to me—and I didn't want to leave Danny either. I usually couldn't stand the little brat, but seeing him so scared and vulnerable, and feeling the same way, made me want to cling to him the same way he was clinging to me._

_"Is this just as nightmare, Kasey?" Danny muttered as I started back to the house, with him in tow._

_I wished it was. I wished it was a nightmare, and I'd be waking up very soon._

_Only nightmares never seem to end._

_And those aren't even reality._


	2. I

**A/N: **_**I've decided that the current title of 'The Puppeteer' is bothering me; it sounds way too…harmless. Now I'm debating between 'Puppet Strings' and 'Devil's Advocate.' Your opinion on a new title is welcome. Takes place a little after GONE, but before HUNGER. Major thanks to those who review (and to those who already have!) :)**_

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**Devil's Advocate |Gone| (01)**

I used to long for independence. I hated the doting parents, the clingy little brother, the overprotective asshole of an older brother. I wanted my own car before I even had a license, my own house before I was even an adult, I spent as much time out of the house and away from my family as possible. I wanted nothing more than to only be responsible for myself.

I wanted freedom.

Only, the moment I got it, I realized how much I didn't want it.

I never wanted to be a mother to my little brother. I didn't want to give him baths, help him brush his teeth, read him bedtime stories, make his meals for him, or spend every minute babysitting him. I never wanted to be a teen mother, without ever getting pregnant.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that having this independence, all this free time to do nothing, this entire life in the FAYZ, isn't freedom. It's being cast into a life I didn't ask for, but one I'm responsible for nonetheless.

After a month of living in the FAYZ, everyone's more or less accepted that this is our life now, and there's nothing to do but work through it. Work through the tough times and the hardships and the vendetta between the Perdido Beach kids and the kids from Coates.

It's been a month since the Thanksgiving Battle, and it seems like whatever unity we had dispersed, faded to people being solitary again.

Sam's in charge.

I'm not for it, I'm not against it.

I'm apathetic—not just about this, but about everything. I don't care about the politics of the FAYZ. I don't care about the coyotes, or Caine, Diana, or Drake. Until the day my life or Danny's is directly threatened, I'll stay this way. Outside our small little world, I just don't care.

I never really had many friends, so as far as I'm concerned, it's just less people to worry about in this godforsaken place.

I'm sitting on the front porch of the house that I've always lived in; Danny and I never left our original house. We live right by the plaza, a coveted area, and we guard our house selfishly. Had we not kept in it constantly during those first few days, it would have been looted for all it was worth. I took to keeping Dean's aluminum baseball bat near me, dubbing myself the sole defender of our old life. Those times have long since faded, though; the bat isn't needed any more, but we keep it around.

Just in case.

Danny is sitting on the front walkway with a bucket of colorful chalk, drawing pictures on the cement. I'm sitting on the porch railing, leaning against one of the support beams of the veranda, with my dad's ukulele in my lap.

My dad was a dork before the FAYZ, and wherever he was now, he's probably still a dork. I mean, for God's sake, the man was an accountant. Other than being good with math and playing the uke, he couldn't do much else. He was pretty useless, to be honest. He played his uke—never a guitar—obsessively in his free time, and it was the closest thing the man had to a friend.

At first I held onto it for comfort, much like how Danny slept with our mother's pillows at night, although her scent has long since gone from the pillow cases, but once the desire for comfort was gone, I only held onto it for another possession, a reminder of a completely different life.

I had no talent with music. I would strum the uke and produce ugly sounds, ugly discordant sounds that were less music and more noise. The more I ran my fingers over the taut strings, the more I paid attention to how to make a certain chord, where to press on the frets and how to hold the neck. I taught myself to play just to break the suffocating silence, just to fill the void. I still can't play real music, but at least it doesn't sound like nails on a chalkboard anymore.

I'm absently strumming the strings, sitting idly in the sun, watching Danny out of the corner of my eye as I've grown accustomed to doing. He's too old to be put in Mother Mary's daycare, but I've never wanted anyone else to take care of my brother since the coming of the FAYZ and the disappearance of everyone over fifteen.

It isn't that I'd suddenly grown attached to Danny. The love is still the obligatory kind shared between siblings, although I've admittedly grown a little fonder of the kid since the FAYZ, but he's really more of a reminder that there had been something else, another life than the one we knew now. Danny being here with me reminds me that the FAYZ isn't all there is—or all there used to be.

I figure that's what I am to him as well. Maybe I remind him of our mom.

Hell if I know.

I finally set the uke on the ground, bored with it, and I close my eyes, tilting my face towards the sunshine to bask in the warmth.

As my mind wanders, it touches on the date. December 16. Something about December is important, although I can't think of what it is...

Oh. Right. The big fifteen.

If I'm not mistaken, my birthday is in a few days, just around the corner. I've thought a lot about just letting myself poof, zip out of this hellish dystopian world, but who's to say what poofing really is? Do you die? Do you end up outside the FAYZ, unharmed and with the rest of the world, outside of this horrible fishbowl?

It's tempting, the possibility of leaving, whether you end up outside or if you just die.

I'm all talk; I'd never really do it. Who else would take care of Danny?

The idiot would probably burn the house down like it almost did that first day.

I fall into a sleepy, half-awake state that's really very comfortable, until a voice disturbs me.

"Hey, Kasey."

I crack my eyes open, not bothering to hide the irritation on my face. "Hi, Sam," I respond.

We weren't friends before the FAYZ. A few exchanged words here and there, but other than that, we might as well have not existed to one another. We ran in different circles. He was School Bus Sam, sure, but he'd faded away from that title, faded back into general anonymity before he got all gung-ho and take-charge with Perdido Beach. It's not like we're friends now, either; acquaintances, maybe, but once again, just scattered conversations here and there.

He's a hero; I'm just Kasey Steele.

Anonymous resident of Perdido Beach. An extra. The girl who used to run things in her circle before the FAYZ, a manipulator, someone who played dirty to get what she wanted. Now, just another face; the politics of high school are so irrelevant in the FAYZ. Things in the past don't matter; who I used to be doesn't matter anymore.

"Do you need something?" I ask, although it's very clear in my tone that I'm not in the mood to talk.

"You'll be fifteen in two days," he says.

"Yep."

Maybe he's surprised at how blasé I am. "You know what happens at fifteen, right?"

"Yep. The poof. The choice. I got all that."

He glances at Danny, who's perfectly oblivious to the both of us. "You won't do it, will you?"

"Do you think I'm an idiot? No. Who else would be able to take care of the brat?" I nod at Danny, who looks up, catching the tail end of that.

"I'm not a brat, Kasey! You're a brat!" he yells.

I just smile at him, then turn back to Sam. "See? Who else would willingly put up with that?"

Sam only smiles wanly.

"No worries. Hakuna matata. I won't poof, for my brat's well-being."

He nods. "Good to hear. I'll see you later, Kasey." Sam turns and starts to walk away, and I almost let him go.

But my curiosity gets the better of me.

"Hey, Sam?" I call after him.

He turns back.

"What's it like? When you turn fifteen and you have to make the choice?" The words come out not as stoic as I'd meant, and I sound nervous. I wince to myself.

He looks thoughtful. "It's...not pleasant. I can tell you that much. You'll see someone you really love—your mom, you dad, whoever—and they'll ask you to come with them. It's tempting—they seem so real—but if you resist, they turn into monsters. Horrible monsters. It'll threaten you, try to intimidate you into coming with it. Just say no."

It sounds almost like an anti-drug speech, and I almost laugh.

"Okay," I say, nodding and hiding my smile. "Thanks."

Sam turns and walks away again, giving a quick greeting to Danny before he leaves for good this time. I watch him go until I can't see him anymore, then sigh and lean back against the support beam of the veranda again, folding my hands behind my head for a makeshift pillow.

You'd think this choice would be easier: live or die. Live or...whatever. Live or poof.

I turn my head to look at Danny, who's humming a nonsense tune as he drags the piece of chalk over the pavement, drawing a girl and a much-smaller boy, holding hands. It has so much detail for a little kid's drawing—enough detail to tell that the little, smiling boy is him, and the taller, dark-haired girl is me. Even on his chalk-depiction of me the smile looks fake.

It stings, to realize that Danny must know to some degree how much I resent caring for him, and I know that, even if I was considering taking the monster's offer in two days, I could never leave him on his own.

Not when he has nothing left but me.

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**Hey. Did you read the Author's Note? No? Scroll your ass back up and read it, then.**


	3. II

**A/N: **_**Author's note, blah, blah, blah... I like Devil's Advocate much better. Anyone who agrees: you're awesome. (And so are my reviewers).**_

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**Devil's Advocate |GONE| (02)**

_Dean looked like he could punch me right in the teeth._

_"You manipulative little bitch," he told me._

_I shrugged again._

_"_Fine. _But only because Izzie's really important to me. I'll give you my damn allow—"_

_Dean was gone._

_I blinked once, twice, rubbed my eyes._

_Gone?_

_Well, where did he go?_

_"Dean," I called uncertainly. After a moment, I managed a somewhat angry tone. "Dean! What the fuck!"_

_I looked around. No Dean. And now, no Danny._

_The game he'd been playing still continued on the TV screen, although his character stopped moving and now stood at a standstill, a sitting duck for the monsters in the game._

_"Danny! Dean!" I yelled. "This isn't funny!"_

_No answer._

_The lights went out. For it being so early in the morning, it was pitch-black. I couldn't see a foot in front of me, and I felt my heart begin to thud faster in my chest. I didn't like the dark. I never grew out of that childish fear of the dark._

_My breathing came a little faster as I got to my feet and staggered blindly through the darkness, hands waving out in front of me in hopes of finding the wall, a light switch, a phone to call the police—anything._

_I tripped. I fell forward, arms windmilling in hopes of somehow propelling myself back to my feet, but it was useless._

_I fell._

_And fell._

_And didn't stop falling._

_The further I fell, the colder it became. It seemed to get even darker, if that were even possible._

_And then there was light. A ghoulish, sickly green light; dim, but quickly growing stronger. I was submerged in green, as though I'd jumped into stagnant swamp water, but I was surrounded with heat. The icy chill of the fall was gone, and replaced with hot, hot heat, the kind that rivaled even the hottest days on Perdido Beach._

_Radioactive-green and smothering heat was existence._

_It was all there was._

_It was all there would ever be—_

* * *

I open my eyes with a jolt. It only takes a millisecond for the memory of the dream to disappear and for the sunlight seeping through the spaces between the blinds to sear my retinas. I immediately shut my eyes again, pressing my face into my pillow and moaning under my breath when the hangover starts to set in. My head feels like it's packed with wet sand, and it hurts bad enough to feel like someone is systematically picking apart my gray matter with tweezers.

I reach out blindly for my bedside table, feeling until my fingertips brush a smooth plastic bottle. I grab and quickly twist off the child-proof cap, tapping several Advil tablets into my palms and pressing them past my lips. I swallow them dry, and I wait breathlessly for them to kick in. Once the headache's dulled enough to open my eyes to slits, I slowly lever myself into a sitting position. I pull my knees to my chest and wrap my arms around them, resting my head against them as I stare at everything littering the bedside table to my left.

The tall, slender bottle of Smirnoff is missing its cap, though there's really nothing left of the alcohol but the last few dregs at the bottom of the bottle. I haven't resorted to drugs yet, but since the coming of the FAYZ, I've seen the appeal to nicotine and alcohol. Vodka's been my reining favorite for a few weeks, though I think that's liable to change soon. It's not that it tastes the best—it tastes like shit, like rubbing alcohol—but because it doesn't take much to get good and drunk.

My bedroom door creaks slightly, and I glance over at it to see Danny peek inside.

"Good morning," I say dryly, though it's most certainly not a good morning.

He smiles and wanders in, climbing up onto my bed and sitting across from me with his legs crossed, on top of the blankets.

He opens his mouth to speak, but I cut him off.

"Talk quietly for a while, okay? I'm not feeling too good this morning."

His eyes flicker to the alcohol, but I know that he doesn't know any better than to suspect that it's just water.

Thankfully, Danny keeps his tone low. "I'm hungry, Kasey."

"Isn't there cereal or something? You know how to make cereal."

"No milk."

Right. All the milk went bad about a week ago.

"Dry cereal isn't so bad."

Danny grimaces.

"You could eat it with water. That's how it was originally supposed to be anyway, with water and not milk."

His grimace deepens. "I'm not eating that!" His voice rises momentarily, but it's loud enough to pierce the hazy shell of my hangover and increase the pain located right behind my eyes.

I flinch to myself, massaging my temples to try and soothe the beast. "Okay. I'll make you toast or something, all right? Just give me a few minutes."

Danny's face crumples into a pout. "If you won't make me breakfast, then maybe Aunt Odette will!"

I laugh without any humor. "Sounds like a plan. Bother Odette instead." I curl back up under the sheets, with my back to the window, and I close my eyes as Danny stomps out of my bedroom, fuming.

I'll probably feel a little guilty for encouraging Danny into bothering one of my very few friends, but right now, the temptation of going back to sleep is too strong.

* * *

"I really appreciate it," Odette says heatedly as she approaches my front porch with Danny in tow. She's trying to look furious, but I know well enough that she loves Danny more than I do; she'll always take him in without a moment's hesitation. "You can't keep—"

"_Shh_. Please." I gingerly tap my temple, a gesture to signify that the dull throb is still there. I lift my cigarette back to my lips to take another drag.

Odette shakes her head, then releases Danny's hand, ruffling his hair. "Go inside and play for a while, okay? I need to talk to your sister."

Danny nods, eager to please her, and he scurries inside without looking at me.

Odette steps up onto the porch and sits in the rocking chair near my perch on the railing, settling into it with a sigh.

I never even knew Odette existed until the FAYZ. It only makes sense; Odette was/is a Coates kid. She has a power not unlike Sam Temple's, though rather than acting like a white-hot blowtorch, Odette can simply create friction between her hands and form baseball-sized fireballs. She'd been 'plastered'—had her hands sealed up in concrete—up at the Academy when she'd refused to follow Caine. You can still see the haunted, hardened person that ordeal had created; Odette, while insanely pretty, had cool blue eyes as hard as ice. She had no qualms about using her powers offensively now.

It's by pure chance that we even met. It was a simple serendipitous encounter, of Odette stumbling upon me trying to operate my mother's car. With a wry smile, she'd gone about teaching me all she knew about driving and cars—a surprising amount of knowledge, too, coming from a fourteen-year-old—and we grew extremely close afterwards. We aren't very similar, but somehow, we click.

Odette doesn't really have a concrete home that she lives in; she lives nomadically and sporadically, though typically when she isn't living in Dean's old room, she's living in with Sam's friend Quinn.

"Put that out," she snaps at me, snatching the cigarette from my lips before waiting for me to do it myself. She ignores my complaining and extinguishes the tip on the arm of the chair; she flings the butt away and scowls at me, folding her arms. "What's wrong with you, Kasey?"

"What ever are you referring to, my dear?" I ask innocently.

"You have a little brother to look out for," Odette says sharply. "You can't go around stealing from your parents' liquor stash and getting drunk when you have Danny to watch out for."

"I didn't ask to look after him," I mumble, twisting the cap off of the plastic water bottle I've been keeping close for hydration. I take a long sip, casually avoiding Odette's eyes.

She sighs. "He's too young to go without having a mother."

"So? I don't have a mom either and I'm doing just fine." I try to ignore the irony in my statement.

"You're the only one he has left. You can't leave him to fend for himself."

"He has you," I point out.

"But you're his family. Don't you think that's more important?"

"Not really. A caretaker is a caretaker."

Odette shakes her head. "You're just saying these things because you're hungover."

"Yeah. I know. For a little prick, I love him."

Odette smiles, but it quickly fades. "Your birthday's tomorrow."

"Yep."

"You're not gonna...you know..." She trails off, uncomfortable talking about the subject.

"Nope. Sam already grilled me about it yesterday. It's like he thinks I'm suicidal or something."

"I hear it's tempting," Odette admits. "You'll want to do it."

I smirk at her. "Well, good thing I can say 'no.'"


End file.
